| Summary: | "It is said that democracy is possible only when it is "safe" for elites. The history of the Right in Latin America, and elsewhere, seems to show this. The Latin American Right has repeatedly deposed elected Left governments that threatened elites and only accepted democracy in the 1980s and 1990s when it became safe due to the Left's defanging and the spread of pro-elite market reforms. The region's "Left Turn" raised the question anew: would the Right accept democracy if it became unsafe for elites? In Compelling Democracy, Gabriel Hetland examines the complex Left-Right relationship is Latin America through the two cases where it is most contested - Venezuela and Bolivia. These two countries are widely considered the most radical Left Turn cases. Using twenty-two months of ethnographic fieldwork Hetland compares participatory reform in a Left- and Right-governed city in each country at the Left Turn's height. Unexpectedly he found success in the Left- and Right-run Venezuelan cases and failure in both Bolivian cities. These doubly puzzling findings lead Hetland to conclude that Venezuela's ruling party became hegemonic - presenting its ideas as the ideas of all - while Bolivia's ruling party did not. This meant the Right in Venezuela but not Bolivia had successfully framed their political objectives on the Left's terrain, where Bolivia's failed. In sum, Hetland provides a nuanced and sophisticated assessment of Latin American politics and show how labels like Left and Right can be complicated when political actors understand how to use them."--
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